November 6 – Buddhist Circuit

The travel company who took care of all of our travel arrangements for this trip came to the hotel to meet with Tara and to present us all with a lovely silver wheel.  It is a replica of one of the wheels from the Jagannath Temple that we visited a couple of days ago.

Today we are driving to visit some monastery ruins and two museums.

On the way we passed by several kilometers of parked trucks. Our guide said they were carrying iron ore to the ships for export, and the line went on for 24 kilometers (14.4 miles).

At the first site, Lalitagiri, the museum was all about Buddha statues depicting various aspects of Buddha (no photos allowed inside - this was taken from the outside through the open door). 

Then we walked the grounds to see the monastery ruins.

Drove to the next site, crossing a river.

The next Buddhist site, Ratnagiri, established circa the 5^th century AD.

And the museum with Buddhist and other statues, and artifacts from the monastery..  

This evening Tara had arranged for a chocolate cake for Paul's birthday (in two days but today worked best for the celebration).